Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have named this kind of gossiping prosocial gossip because it is used to warn others, which in turn can lower the overall exploitation of groups. As Evette Dionne, the former editor-in-chief of Bitch Media, said at a Clayman Institute for Gender Research event about the feminist use of rumor, people “reduce a credible allegation, an accusation against someone who has harmed someone else” to gossip as a way to “delegitimize it and undermine it, and make it seem as if it’s simply a rumor with no weight and no teeth to it.” Calling this form
...more
